Suturing body tissue is a time consuming aspect of many surgical procedures. For many surgical procedures, it is necessary to make a large opening in the human body to expose the area that requires surgical repair. There are instruments available, such as endoscopes or laparoscopes, that allow viewing of certain areas of the human body through a small puncture wound without exposing the entire body cavity. Endoscopes or laparoscopes can be used in conjunction with specialized surgical instruments to detect, diagnose, and repair areas of the body that previously required open surgery to access.
Some surgical instruments used in endoscopic or laparoscopic procedures are limited by the manner in which they access the areas of the human body in need of repair. In particular, the instruments may not be able to access tissue or organs located deep within the body or that are in some way obstructed. Also, many of the instruments are limited by the way they grasp tissue, apply a suture, or recapture a needle and suture. Furthermore, many of the instruments are complicated and expensive to produce due to the numerous parts and/or subassemblies required to make them function properly.
Suturing instruments, and more specifically suturing instruments used in endoscopic or laparoscopic procedures, are generally rigid and do not provide the operator a range of motion to access difficult-to-reach parts of the anatomical region requiring sutures. Accordingly, multiple instruments of various configurations and sizes typically are used to access all of the necessary tissue areas. These limitations of known suturing instruments complicate endoscopic or laparoscopic procedures for the surgeon by requiring the insertion and removal of multiple instruments from a surgical site as the target suturing area changes during the course of the surgical procedure.
Many medical procedures require that multiple sutures be placed within a patient. Typical suturing instruments enable a surgeon to place only one suture at a time. With such suturing instruments, the surgeon is required to remove the instrument from a surgical site and reload the instrument between placing each suture. Further, the surgeon may be required to use forceps or other instruments to help place the suture. In some instances, the forceps or other instruments may require an additional incision to access the surgical site.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,609 discloses a surgical needle and retainer system.